Make Your Own Spectrometer

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From Solar Spark, this simple activity allows students to make a spectrometer using a card box and a compact disc. The compact disc acts as a diffraction grating and splits the light being observed into its constituent wavelengths. This gives the colours of the rainbow when viewing white light. This type of analysis is applied in fields such as astronomy, to identify elements in distant stars.

The spectroscope can be used to help students understand:
• light waves
• light and colour
• spectroscopy
• atomic structure
• chemical analysis

URL: http://stem.org.uk/rx5a4

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